ed that he
should pass his life amid the pleasant parterres of Kew. At sixteen, or
thereabout, on a visit to a relative, he catches his first sight of the
Channel waters, and of the royal fleet riding at anchor at Spithead. And
at that sight, the "old Armada," and the "brave Rodney," and the "wooden
walls," of which he had read, come drifting like a poem into his
thought, and he vows that he will become a sailor,--maybe, in time, the
Admiral Cobbett. But here, too, the fates are against him: a kind
captain to whom he makes application suspects him for a runaway, and
advises him to find his way home.

He returns once more to the plough; "but," he says, "I was now spoiled
for a farmer." He sighs for the world; the little horizon of Farnham
(his native town) is too narrow for him; and the very next year he makes
his final escapade.

"It was on the 6th of May, 1783, that I, like Don Quixote, sallied forth
to seek adventures. I was dressed in my holiday clothes, in order to
accompany two or three lasses to Guildford fair. They were to assemble
at a house about three miles from my home, where I was to attend them;
but, unfortunately for me, I had to cross the London turnpike-road. The
stage-coach had just turned the summit of a hill, and was rattling down
towards me at a merry rate. The notion of going to London never entered
my mind till this very moment; yet the step was completely determined on
before the coach came to the spot where I stood. Up I got, and was in
London about nine o'clock in the evening."

His immediate adventure in the metropolis proves to be his instalment as
scrivener in an attorney's office. No wonder he chafes at this; no
wonder, that, in his wanderings about town, he is charmed by an
advertisement which invited all loyal and public-spirited young men to
repair to a certain "rendezvous"; he goes to the rendezvous, and
presently finds himself a recruit in one of His Majesty's regiments
which is filling up for service in British America.

He must have been an apt soldier, so far as drill went; for I find that
he rose rapidly to the grade of corporal, and thence to the position of
sergeant-major. He tells us that his early habits, his strict attention
to duty, and his native talent were the occasion of his swift promotion.
In New Brunswick, upon a certain winter's morning, he falls in with the
rosy-faced daughter of a sergeant of artillery, who was scrubbing her
pans at sunrise, upon the snow. "I mad